International Lithium Corp. Lake near Ignace

By Kevin Vincent

By virtue of its name, International Lithium is scouring the globe for critical minerals, but it’s recent drill results in northwestern Ontario that have the company’s undivided attention.

“We’ve got projects in Canada and in Ireland, and we’re also looking quite strategically at Zimbabwe as a country. The main one is Raleigh Lake, (near Ignace) said John Wisbey, Chairman and CEO in a recent investors interview.

The company delivered a maiden mineral resource estimate for Raleigh Lake earlier this year. “That’s great because while I love telling people that we’ve got a good project, it’s going to be so fantastic. It’s so much better to be able to say we’ve actually published some numbers and we’ll get better and better because we’re heading for the next stage later this year and we can hopefully put some economics around those numbers as well.”

Over 18 months the company completed 14,000 meters of drilling which allowed International Lithium to come to deliver the maiden resource estimate.

“Basically, you could drill one hole, you might find lithium, but if you drill another whole 50 meters away, you might not. And the nice thing about this project is that we found an area where, if you did drill 50 meters away, you’d find pegmatite and there was lithium in it, and the same thing, another 50 meters away.”

Wisbey says the company ended up with rubidium. “The market is about 20 times that of lithium. And we were able to have a separate resource estimate for the rubidium as well as for the lithium. And that was very pleasing.”

In the interim, the company spun off another northwestern Ontario project near Ignace, Mavis Lake, to Critical Resources. “We wish them every success in progressing to the next level. Our sale has been a good win/win. Critical Resources are achieving good results there, while ILC has been able to focus on Raleigh Lake where we have also achieved good results with our own 43-101 compliant Maiden Resource estimates for lithium and rubidium announced on March 1, 2023.”

Raleigh Lake is near excellent infrastructure and is about an hour’s drive towards Thunder Bay and Lake Superior from Mavis Lake down the Trans-Canada highway. Raleigh Lake is massive at 48,500 hectares. “But meanwhile, we have a resource estimate which is the absolute minimum even if we find nothing else which is really in my view unlikely,” said Wisbey.

International Lithium Corp. believes that the world faces a significant turning point in the energy market’s dependence on oil and gas and in the governmental and public view of climate change. In addition, we have seen the clear and increasingly urgent wish by the USA and Canada to safeguard their supplies of critical battery metals and to become more self-sufficient. The company says its Canadian projects are strategic in that respect.